Roma president says Barcelona should 'at the very least' send Lionel Messi as compensation for swiping Malcom

Don’t expect Roma to be accepting any apologies from Barcelona for how they acquired Malcom. (AP Photo)

Say this for AS Roma president James Pallotta: after losing Malcolm to FC Barcelona at the eleventh hour, he is shooting his shot.

Roma was left unhappy and red-faced Tuesday when Barcelona announced a €41 million transfer for Malcom from Bordeaux, who apparently reneged on an agreement to send the 21-year-old winger to Italy for around €32 million, according to ESPN. Roma reportedly believed the deal was done to the point that they were expecting Malcom to land in Rome for a physical.

Roma president reacts to Barcelona’s Malcom deal

In an interview with Sirius XM FC, Pallotta said Barcelona apologized for how the deal went down, but he wasn’t interested in accepting it. Instead, he pronounced that there were only two things Barcelona could do that would make him accept its apology: a) send Malcom to Roma as Bordeaux previously agreed or b) send Lionel Messi to Roma. He might not have been completely serious on the second one.

“They apologized to us yesterday about their actions and how they did things. I don’t accept the apology at all, ” Pallotta said. “The only way I’ll accept the apology is on either one of two things. I mean, at the end of the day, send the player to us and, you know, that’s not going to happen. But maybe as a goodwill gesture, at the very least, they should send Messi to us.”

We’ll see how those proposals work out for Roma, but hey, you can’t blame them for putting it out there.

Pallotta also said he has spoken to Roma’s legal team and he expects there to be litigation against Bordeaux, whose actions he called “ridiculous.” That is probably the more consequential development from his interview, assuming Barcelona doesn’t decide to pull the most incredible face-turn in the history of soccer.